With the advent of the smartphone and numerous mobile devices, wireless data usage has exploded over the past decade. WiFi has emerged as a pivotal technology for mobile devices offering the potential for exceptional connectivity speeds. Network operators are faced with meeting wireless demands with WiFi ranking as one of the critical technologies to meet those demands. In fact, nearly all mobile devices try in some form to push users to WiFi to deliver what is predicted to be a better user Quality of Experience (QoE). In some embodiments, from the standpoint of the user, the general desire is for the network connectivity to simply work. Improved cellular connectivity over the past few years has made the choice of cellular versus WiFi more of an economic choice rather than that of a performance choice, particularly with public WiFi. This narrowing of the performance gap has made poor WiFi performance all the more stark in terms of interrupting the seamless connectivity experience for the user. Further, such narrowing will only be more pronounced as emerging efforts, such as Hotspot 2.0 (Passpoint) and Access Network and Discovery Services Function (ANDSF), greatly increase WiFi usage outside of the home. The performance of WiFi may vary significantly making WiFi link characterization (and more broadly the path characterization) a critical element of the user Quality of Experience (QoE).